In the field of cotton ginning, which is the process of separating the cotton fibers from the seed, the fibers known as lint have for many years been compressed into six-sided rectilinear bales and partially covered or fully covered with various bagging materials and held together with ties of various sorts. Over the many years, the baling of cotton lint has evolved from primitive baling presses and manual tying and wrapping to fully automated higher capacity and higher density presses with fully automated bale-tying systems. A further significant development is the system in which the bale is formed and the ties are applied in the press and the naked bale is conveyed from the press where the bale cover is applied external of the press. A common system used to apply the bale cover to the bale employs a simple device called a bale bagger which consists of two vertically hinged metal half-sleeves that, when pivoted close together, allow open-ended bags of bale wrapping material to be manually placed over the two sleeve halves such that the two sleeve halves act as shoe horns when the bale is pushed between the hinged sleeve halves to snugly apply the open-ended bag over the bale after which the open end of the bag is manually folded over the bale end and permanently fastened closed by various means.
While this bale covering system has released the press from much automated high-capacity operation, due to its present state it requires significant labor to manually move the individual bale bag covers from their incoming layered stacks and manually apply the open end of the bags over the pairs of sleeve segments of the bagger, which requires two operators, one on each side of the bagger. Furthermore, the closing of the open end of the bag requires additional labor and results in various degrees of bag closure quality.
Recently, open-ended bags lightly attached in continuous roll form have proven to be satisfactory bale covers and they are very price competitive. These rolls of frangibly attached continuous individual bale covers lend themselves well to automation. The present invention introduces novel concepts that, taken together, provide essential elements for a fully automated, efficient and quality bale cover application system.